


So Where the Bloody Hell Are You?

by EnglishAsSheIsSpoke



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Booker and Quynh have rejoined the team, Gen, Kind of travelling around Australia, Post-Canon, Surely this will end well, The disaster siblings go on contiki tour, Though they have dealt with approximately zero of their issues, kind of kidnapping?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-13 03:46:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29770182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EnglishAsSheIsSpoke/pseuds/EnglishAsSheIsSpoke
Summary: In which a rescue mission goes disastrously wrong, Booker is kidnapped or taken on vacation depending on who you ask, Quynh embarks on her gap year of personal discovery, and the rest of the team does their best to remember that in life, much like Risk, Australia is the key to victory.
Relationships: Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Quynh | Noriko
Comments: 2
Kudos: 22





	So Where the Bloody Hell Are You?

It wasn’t like they avoided jobs that involved children, not when kids were so constantly the targeted victims or helpless bystanders of so many crimes. But the others had seen the toll those jobs took on Booker. It was because kids in general just _liked_ him. Andy was kind enough but distant and too focused on any external threats to spend much time on them. Joe was okay with them, actually. He knew well enough to leave the kids be unless they wanted attention, then he’d patiently answer their questions or crack jokes that set them at ease. Nicky wanted them to like him but tried too hard, like a well-meaning but awkward uncle asking questions about their hobbies. Watching him try to play the ‘fun’ games he had created or try to organise a singalong was just the worst. Meanwhile Booker would have children crawling all over him like ants, clinging to his legs as he walked, nestled against him wherever he sat so they could use him as a pillow.

“Most kids like being picked up like a sack of shit,” Booker tried to explain once. They had rescued two boys and a girl from a kidnapping attempt. Joe was out with Andy meeting their contact to hand the kids over to some social group to take over their care. The small boy slung over his shoulder kicked his legs in joy, secure in Booker’s hands. Booker hung him precariously down his back and the laughter became ear piercing. Booker winced. “Something to do with their brains needing to be rattled about. I read that somewhere.”

Nicky was too horrified by that to hiss at Booker for swearing. He had spent half an hour gathering Joe’s precious art supplies for the other kids to do drawings. The boy and girl looked longingly over at Booker. “You cannot _rattle their brains_ , Booker.”

Booker tossed the boy he held down onto the couch and gestured for the girl sadly holding a pencil and desultorily drawing a stick figure to get up. “Your turn.”

She squealed and threw the pencil aside. Nicky looked heartbroken. Booker picked the girl up to give her a helicopter ride. That afternoon ended with Booker lying awkwardly on the couch with three children tucked around him, kicking him in their sleep. Nicky had withdrawn to the kitchen in a sulk, deciding in a doomed effort that a carefully prepared meal of chicken cacciatore would afford him their attention and affection.

That had been a good afternoon, all things considered.

It was _after_ the missions like these that the piper would demand his price. Booker couldn’t help the wellspring of grief that burbled within him. It flooded through him, made him feel swollen like a balloon ready to burst. He’d scratch angrily at his arms and disappear for long, sullen walks with his flask. He would get viciously drunk. He would think of his sons when they were little and tell himself not to think of them because that helped no one. And then he’d think of them anyway. Joe and Nicky let him be. Andy would sometimes come on the walks with him, a silent supportive presence while he drank himself nonsensical. It helped, he supposed, as much as anything could.

Anyway. They all knew Booker didn’t enjoy jobs involving children. It was why he’d chosen the parameters of the job in Sudan. Booker knew they would all agree if it was him asking to help a group of children. They would think he was getting better.

Joe was right; he really was a selfish piece of shit.

So that was indirectly why the thing with the fire happened, though Booker was hard-pressed to put the pieces together when he woke up on a private airplane taxiing down a runway. Quynh, like a psychopomp from his nightmares, loomed over him. Booker jumped and then tried to pretend he hadn’t. He looked for the others and they were nowhere to be seen.

“Where are we?” He ran a hand over his face, groggy and confused. He remembered the fire. He remembered getting to the safehouse, and finding the bottle of rum he had hidden in a vent, where no one could pour it down a drain while he wasn’t looking. He remembered drinking the rum. All of the rum. Very quickly. The rest, as that sad sack Hamlet once moaned, was silence.

“Australia.”

“But – wha-” Booker gagged around the sour taste in his mouth. He needed a drink. Quynh handed him a glass of clear iced liquid. He hoped for vodka and was given water. “Where are the others?”

“Not here. We are going on vacation.” Quynh said the word like she been practising it. He’d caught her doing that before when he walked past the bathroom of the safehouse and the door was ajar. Playing the pronunciation of a word over and over again on her phone, repeating it until she had each vowel and consonant perfected. She’d looked in the mirror and said ‘platypus’ twice, once in perfect British English and once in American English. Then she’d caught his reflection staring and he beat a hasty retreat down the hallway. Quynh was prickly about everything she had to learn, her pride and dignity ruffled, and when Quynh was prickly, Booker was the one who got the prickles.

“You drugged me!”

The derisive look Quynh gave him could have cut through stone.

“I’m calling Andy,” Booker said. He didn’t like the way it sounded as if he was about to tell on Quynh to a parent. He wasn’t sure where his phone even was.

Quynh tossed him hers.

“Andy, what the fuck?” Booker said in greeting when she picked up.

“Oh, you’re awake.” Andy was eating something like an apple or a carrot, and she punctuated her words with obnoxious chewing sounds.

“Yes, I’m awake and in-” Booker looked out the window. “Sydney, I think. I’m in Sydney, Andy. Remember how I was in Chía with you this morning?”

“Yesterday morning, actually.”

“Quynh has kidnapped me. Again!”

“Only a little bit.” She wasn’t laughing out loud, but Booker knew Andy and he knew what she sounded like when she was laughing _inside_. He liked being in on the joke. It was less fun when he was the joke. “You’re going on vacation, she says.”

“Joe! Nicky!”

Andy took another loud bite of whatever she was eating. “You’re not on speaker, Book, they can’t hear you.”

“Nile!”

“Look,” she sighed. “You need some time off. Quynh needs some time off. If you really want to come back, we’re right here. You can turn the plane around. Just think about whether that’s what you want first.”

Booker was silent for a while. Andy didn’t hang up or try to make him talk, just crunched her apple or carrot or whatever in his ear and waited.

“Okay,” He said finally. “Okay.”

Quynh took the phone from him then, ignoring his affronted look as she began speaking a thousand-year-old variant of Vietnamese down the line. She only did that because she knew Booker didn’t understand it. The joke was on her though, Booker didn’t even know modern Vietnamese.

By the time she had hung up, Booker had found the mini bar and made himself a cocktail of whisky, vodka and cola. It was awful but it would lubricate the effects of the hangover that was currently fucking him dry. The ice clinked against the glass as he held it up in a toast, said “To our vacation,” and downed the lot.

***

“Is this a good idea?” Nile asked Andy after she hung up and tossed the apple core in the bin. From across the room. Andy’s aim was intimidating even with a piece of fruit. One day, Nile swore, she was going to do this shit to newbies and it was going to be so great.

“I don’t know. Can’t be worse than keeping them here though.” Andy dropped the phone on the table with a clatter and sighed. “I don’t want a repeat of the fire. We can’t do that again.”

No kidding. Nile was still scrubbing the smell of her clothes. It… lingered. So did the mental images.

“Was Booker mad?”

“He was hungover.”

“So yeah.” Nile went and sat at the table across from Andy. “Is Quynh okay?”

Andy stared at her hands and then looked up at Nile and smiled. It was the kind of smile that someone pulled when they were trying very hard not to cry. Nile recognized it from her mom’s face. It wasn’t convincing anyone and it knew it too. Andy’s eyes were watering. This sucked. Nile offered the same smile back and sat there with her while the sunlight from the window slowly moved across the room.


End file.
